Marketing a local business website: what works and what doesn't

A new website is a shop on a street nobody walks down yet. It does not bring customers on its own — something has to send them there.

The good news for a local business is that the things that actually work are few, mostly free, and not complicated. The bad news is that your inbox will fill up with people selling the things that don't.

Here is the honest split, with the evidence for each.

What works:

• A complete, active Google Business Profile
• A steady trickle of recent Google reviews, with replies
• A site that plainly answers "do you do X, in Y?"
• Email to people who have already bought from you
• Paid search — but only once you know what a customer is worth

What doesn't:

• Anyone who guarantees a ranking
• Buying links or "backlink packages"
• Pages of AI-written filler and keyword-stuffed text
• Fake, bought or filtered reviews

When somebody searches "plumber near me" or "bakery in Camas", the map and the three businesses under it are the first thing they see — before any website. Those come from Google Business Profiles.

Google says plainly how it decides who shows there. Three things:

• Relevance refers to how well a Business Profile matches what someone is searching for.
• Distance considers how far each business is from the customer who's searching.
• Prominence refers to how well-known a business is.

And one thing it rules out entirely:

There's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google.

You cannot change distance. You can change the other two: choose the right categories, list every service you actually offer, set accurate hours, add real photos, and keep it up to date. That is relevance. Prominence is mostly the next point.

If you have not set one up, this guide walks through it.

Google says it directly: "More reviews and positive ratings can help your business's local ranking." Customers weigh them just as heavily. BrightLocal's 2026 survey of 1,002 US consumers found:

• 97% read reviews for local businesses, and 41% always do.
• 68% will only use a business with four stars or more — up from 55% a year earlier.
• 74% look for reviews written in the last three months.
• 89% expect the owner to respond to reviews.

The recency number is the one people miss. Forty five-star reviews from 2021 do less for you than eight from this summer. What wins is a habit: ask every happy customer, every week, and reply to everything — good and bad.

How to ask without breaking Google's rules is its own article: getting reviews the right way.

People do not search for your business name until they already know it. They search for what they need: "gutter cleaning Vancouver WA", "dog groomer that does cats", "watch battery replacement near me".

A site gets found for those when it plainly says the answer — a page for each main service, naming the places you serve, in the words a customer would use. That is the "relevance" Google talks about, and it is the part of your website that does marketing.

If your site is not showing up at all, the usual causes and fixes are in why your business doesn't show up on Google.

There is a newer reason to get this right. The same BrightLocal survey found 45% of consumers now use AI tools like ChatGPT for local recommendations, while Google's share fell from 83% to 71% in a year. Those tools answer from what your site and profile actually say. A page that clearly states what you do, where and for whom is readable by both.

Your cheapest new sale is usually an old customer. A short email every month or two — a seasonal reminder, a new service, an honest "we have openings next week" — costs next to nothing and reaches people who already trust you.

Litmus, which sells email tools, puts the average return at $36 for every $1 spent. Treat a vendor's headline figure with a pinch of salt, but the direction is not in dispute: email to your own list is one of the few channels where the cost is close to zero.

The only rules: send it from your own domain (why that matters is in why your emails go to spam), only to people who agreed to hear from you, and always with a way to unsubscribe.

Google Ads can put you at the top of results tomorrow. Whether it is worth it is arithmetic.

LocaliQ's benchmark of 3,211 home-services campaigns found an average of $7.85 per click and $90.92 per lead. So before you start, answer one question: what is a new customer worth to me? If a typical job earns you $150 and one lead in three becomes a job, each customer costs about $270 in ads — a loss. If a job is worth $2,000, it is a bargain.

Start small, point ads at the one page that sells that service, and stop anything that does not bring enquiries within a month. Ads also stop working the day you stop paying, which is why the free channels above come first.

Google's own page on hiring an SEO:

No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google. Beware of SEOs that claim to guarantee rankings, allege a "special relationship" with Google, or advertise a "priority submit" to Google.

And about the emails you are already getting:

Be wary of SEO firms and web consultants or agencies that email you out of the blue.

"We'll get you 500 backlinks for $99." Google lists this by name as spam:

Buying or selling links for ranking purposes. This includes: Exchanging money for links, or posts that contain links.

At best the links are ignored. At worst they drag your site down.

Twenty AI-written blog posts a month, or a footer crammed with every town name in the county, is not content — Google calls it spam. Two named policies:

Scaled content abuse: Many pages are generated for the primary purpose of manipulating search rankings and not helping users.

Keyword stuffing: Filling a web page with keywords or numbers in an attempt to manipulate rankings in Google Search results.

One genuinely useful page — prices, a process, an honest answer to the question customers ask on the phone — beats fifty that exist to be indexed.

Since October 21, 2024, the Federal Trade Commission's rule on reviews lets it seek civil penalties against businesses that knowingly break it. The rule bans, among other things:

• fake reviews and testimonials,
• paying or rewarding people for a positive (or negative) review,
• reviews from staff or family without saying so,
• and threatening or pressuring people to take a bad review down.

Google removes fake reviews as well, and can restrict a profile that collects them. The only safe review is a real one from a real customer who was asked without strings.

• Every job: ask the customer for a Google review, with the direct link.
• Every week: reply to every new review. Post one photo or update to your Business Profile.
• Every month: check your hours, services and photos are still right. Send one short email to past customers if you have news.
• Every quarter: add or improve one page on your site that answers a question customers keep asking.

None of this is clever. It works because most of your competitors don't do it.

The routine above is yours, and it should be — nobody can ask your customers for reviews better than you can. The website end of it is mine, and it is built in from the start rather than sold to you afterwards:

• A page for each main service, naming the places you serve, written in the words your customers actually search with. I write them; you correct them.
• SEO and AI-search indexing on every site: the sitemap, the structured data and a site that loads fast on a phone, so Google and tools like ChatGPT can read exactly what you do and where.
• Your Google Business Profile, set up properly. It stays in your name, and I help with the categories, services and hours — the relevance part of the ranking that you can control.
• Your reviews, on your site. Send me the good ones and I put them on the page, linked back to Google so a stranger can check they are real.
• Email from your own domain, set up so it arrives, and — if you want the follow-ups sent for you — an automated email system that answers every enquiry the moment it comes in.

What I will not sell you is anything from the "what doesn't work" list. No ranking guarantees, no link packages, no pages written to be indexed rather than read. If a site is not showing up, tell me what you searched for and I will tell you why.